11/6/2020 Wow! It's happening!

I wrote this yesterday: “I’m all over the place. How about you?”

Today I’m: “I think I lost weight last night and it was some of the heaviness of persistent stress.”

It’s happening, Friends. Yes, we all know nothing will be sensationally simple going forward. Right now, the Senate is where it was pre-election. (Though hold on, Stacey Abram’s Amazing Georgia is having TWO senate races in January.)

The Trump story right now is that Dems cheated by stuffing ballot boxes with Biden ballots. If Dems composed (tens of thousands?) of fake ballots to tip the scales … then why didn’t those durn cheaters vote for Dem senate and other down-ballot candidates? Did Dems not pay enough to the “backroom thugs?”

Sheesh.

What we witnessed and have been a part of of - is a nation saying "We are better than this." 

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An opinion I’m seeing too many places - and I’m arguing it every single time.

“White women increased their support for Trump in this election.” And then the statement is jumped on by many others who are furious at white women.

Hark! Hark! THERE ARE NO EXIT POLLS ON ABSENTEE BALLOTS. Whatever opinions are being tossed around right now on the basis of demographic groups of voters – white women, Black youth, Hispanic males, college students, Ferrari owners – all of those stats are based on exit polls of people who voted IN PERSON.

It is not real information. Fight pigeonholing based on cardinals, bluebirds, and penguins.

There’s a lot to figure out but we won’t learn anything based on exit polls only of people who went to the polls and not by finding out who voted by mail and drop-off. 

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There’s so much talk right now about how dysfunctional our society has become. All the cheating, lying, violence, rioting, harmful drug-using, laziness, racism, and xenophobia.

It’s the worse society most of us have seen in our lifetime. That’s what we are being told and that’s what way too many of us believe.

Most of us (who read my small website) are white; that’s the way my cookie crumbles.

Here’s what I think (and hope). I think the statement that society has become terrible – is the swan song of white privilege.

It’s been bad out there for a long, long time. Like this: I’ve been reading American history for decades, but it was only last year that I heard about the Tulsa Greenwood massacre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre  I knew that it is more fraught to be black than white in this society. I didn’t know about “the talk” Black parents have with their kids, because it is that effing dangerous to be a black teenager walking down a street. It never occurred to me that parents and grandparents of kids who are black live with an entire extra layer of stress and care.

Yes, there’s a lot to take in about being an American in 2020. But let’s not fall into wallows of self-pitying solipsism. Let’s not walk around pining for our personally less traumatic pasts. While we were having rather safe and pleasant lives, others were – and still are - suffering the ravages of systemic racism.

Like this right now: Did you know 140 people drowned two weeks ago, trying to emigrate to some place they could get jobs? https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/02/refu-n02.html Are we aware that our sisters and brothers in Central America – RIGHT NOW - are on rooftops waiting for help? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/storm-eta-floods-honduras/vi-BB1aJGDh

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I have more to say, but it’s sunny and 70 degrees outside and it is my holy belief that when the weather is like this in the Midwest in November, I better go out there.   

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This is the URL that Karen Kant mentions in her comment.  I'm so incredibnly moved. Read the story and then listen. Yes, this is what we mean.  Listen Here. 

Here is a jarring and ferocious poem about the world we want, that David sent to me. Read Here